Month: Mar 2014

Tory councillors seem to be just as hellbent on spending our hard earned taxes on schemes which provide great value – if you’re one of them – as their parliamentary colleagues. Bully for them, boo for the rest of us.

Mind you, at the same time, the council has been telling residents money is so tight that cuts will have to be made to services for the elderly, the disabled, people with mental health problems, youth programmes and children’s care programmes including the axing of school crossing patrols:

Foolishness is a charitable word for this harsh, counterproductive waste of taxpayers’ money on flawed and unfit schemes – something the coalition, preaching a message of austerity, should be avoiding like the plague rather than throwing money at.
If they wish to use that money to stimulate job creation, that’s fine but this scam looks like nothing more than the taxpayer subsidising the payrolls of a select group of organisations.

The schemes vary from the theoretically voluntary “Work Experience Programme” to the definitely mandatory “Mandatory Work Activity”. The schemes vary in length from 2 weeks to 2 months, but the government has decided this isn’t enough, since none of the schemes are proving to be any…

Like this:

All the more reason to keep campaigning.
A clear difference in policy between the Coalition and Labour – shame there aren’t a few more. If you’re in the vicinity and free on 5 April please consider joining in.

Like this:

Commendable. Those of us who have experienced WEA courses, as adult learners or as tutors are well aware of the benefits of continuing education.
All the more reason why it is essential that adult, returner and all strands of continuing education form part of a national life long education strategy.

Improved health and wellbeing can be a driver, a vehicle and an outcome of adult and community learning. This summarised part of an online discussion today with colleagues from other organisations. We agreed to think of some examples from our organisations. Here are some from the Workers’ Educational Association.

Health and wellbeing as a driver for adult learning

Many people get involved in adult learning to improve their physical and mental health.

The WEA carried out an impact survey in 2013 of 522 students who had taken part in a range of our adult learning courses in the autumn of 2012. 45 per cent of the people who responded said that their main motivation was ‘to improve wellbeing or keep mind and body healthy and active’. 31 per cent said that they had wanted ‘to improve self-confidence’. The full results of the survey are available here.

I watched a different BBC history glossy the other evening about The Plantagenets. This version of the Middle Ages had powerful women forging alliances and dynasties in the bedchamber and with the sword, or by cunning, or any combination of the aforementioned strategies. It had armies criss-crossing the Channel – no ferries or tunnel – and kings and princes murdering, kidnapping, ransoming each other in a transcontinental bloodbath.
My word, their soldiery, camp-followers, diplomats, envoys and spies were a well-travelled lot!
We are living in an age of revision – one only has to look at what is being offered in the UK school curriculum to see this. Approved canonical texts or lists of ‘facts’ are replacing the development of understanding and insight into processes which drive the subject matter; replacing the examination of contexts in which the knowledge itemised in the canon came to be significant.
And we live, perpetually, in an age of misogyny.

I’ve just finished watching a BBC programme with the title ‘A Very British Renaissance‘. Now, I admit I was expecting to have some strong reactions to this, since I came to it from the brilliant scholar David Rundle’s blog, where he’s just written a learned and funny take-down of some of the annoying assumptions therein. As he points out, this programme was dead keen to push an image of a ‘distinctively English’ period of history, during which we Brits left our insular isolation behind and began to beat the Continent at its own game. The emerging British (= English) Renaissance was a time of genius and beauty, so narrator Dr James Fox argues, an amazing advance on the benighted, crude and murky culture of the Middle Ages. It was also, I began to realize, yet another Age Without Women.

So when the Sun risesIn the East todayYou will know that theHours that follow dawnTo dusk will equal thoseFrom dusk to dawningOne single day’s length hence;And that an egg placedRound end down willStand erect and neither toppleOne way nor the other.Equinox. Equilux. Balance in timeAnd space. In this place.

Spring sunshine paints a prettyPicture picking out theGolden trumpets, the fresh purples,Whites, yellows, blues ofSpring bulbs burst into completionAnnouncing Spring is here.With the winter lost andOnce more banished newGreen shoots, buds and leavesEvidence Ôstara and her Handiwork.Dawn, new light, new life,New beginnings at thisPoint in time and space.

In the city giant cranesCome back to life.Trucks, diggers, hoists and mixersServiced by the hostWho, ant-like, this andThat way move toBuild and raise the citadel.Machines, men, sand and waterSteel, wood, fire, glassDo Ôstara’s work and bidding.New from naught, or worn,Or old. In creation: manAnd nature, hand-in-hand.

A gentle reminder that public servants are just that.
For those who feel there is no point in protest, be aware that such thinking is self-fulfilling:
– You say nothing can be done;
– You do nothing;
– Nothing is done.
And the next time, you say nothing can be done…et cetera.
Here is an example of local people doing something – campaigning – and saying “No, enough!” and tasting victory.

Councillors at the Ladywood District Committee announced they had dropped plans to close Spring Hill Library due to the strength of opposition shown by the local community.
This is a stunning victory for campaigners who have been collecting names for their petition, organising public meetings, and lobbying councillors over the last two months. The petition against closure of Spring Hill obtained 2500 signatories, most collected next to the checkouts in Tesco.

The District Committee said that savings would be found elsewhere, and this raises the danger of moving other facilities into the Library building and reducing the library services, as well as further cuts to play centres or neighbourhood officers.
We say the District Committee should defy the council cabinet and set a district budget that protects all existing services under their control. this is the least which Ladywood deserves. All power to the campaigners and the community for achieving…